The Spectator’s View: When the courts don’t trust the government

Something quite remarkable happened at a court hearing in Montreal earlier this week. Federal Court Judge Luc Martineau ordered Public Safety Minister of Canada Steven Blaney and the RCMP to immediately turn over a hard drive containing a copy of all Quebec gun registry data.

He made that order even though the court had received "four separate undertakings" that the data in question would be preserved. The judge ordered the evidence turned over anyway, ostensibly because he didn't trust the federal government to keep its promise. He had good reason not to, but if you think about it, it's still a shocking thing for a judge to say. He didn't trust the government to abide by a legal decision.

This is just one step in a long legal wrangle between information privacy commissioner Suzanne Legault and the government. In the process of killing the long gun registry, the government wanted to destroy all records relating to it as quickly as possible. There was an appeal for information contained in those records. The RCMP was directed to and promised to keep the data safe pending the outcome of the appeal. Instead it destroyed the data. Claims have been made that it was acting at the behest of the government.

Part of the reason the judge doesn't trust the government has to do with what it did when the privacy commissioner first accused the Mounties of breaking the Access to Information Act. The Harper government responded by retroactively rewriting that law, granting amnesty to anyone involved in that particular document destruction. It then backdated those changes to 2011 to ensure they would apply to the Mounties in this case, and slipped the change through deep inside the 170-odd page budget bill.

Why was a change to the Access to Information Act buried in a budget bill? But that bit of fancy legislative footwork is nothing compared to what the government did. On learning the Mounties would face charges from the country's own privacy commissioner, it changed the law so that the data destruction couldn't be considered a crime. No charges, no trial, no evidence, no testimony. Nothing to see here.

The judge turned many heads when he drew a hyperbolic parallel. Would Nazis be absolved of war crimes if the laws governing them were changed after the crimes and backdated to 1940 before they happened? Martineau didn't do the cause any good by overreaching. But his central concern, one shared by the privacy commissioners and worried pundits even if not by the average Canadian, should not be overlooked.

If a majority government will justify potential wrongdoing by simply and arbitrarily changing the law after the bad deeds have been committed, what else might it do? Interesting election question.

Howard Elliott

The Spectator’s View: When the courts don’t trust the government

OpinionJun 26, 2015Hamilton Spectator

Something quite remarkable happened at a court hearing in Montreal earlier this week. Federal Court Judge Luc Martineau ordered Public Safety Minister of Canada Steven Blaney and the RCMP to immediately turn over a hard drive containing a copy of all Quebec gun registry data.

He made that order even though the court had received "four separate undertakings" that the data in question would be preserved. The judge ordered the evidence turned over anyway, ostensibly because he didn't trust the federal government to keep its promise. He had good reason not to, but if you think about it, it's still a shocking thing for a judge to say. He didn't trust the government to abide by a legal decision.

This is just one step in a long legal wrangle between information privacy commissioner Suzanne Legault and the government. In the process of killing the long gun registry, the government wanted to destroy all records relating to it as quickly as possible. There was an appeal for information contained in those records. The RCMP was directed to and promised to keep the data safe pending the outcome of the appeal. Instead it destroyed the data. Claims have been made that it was acting at the behest of the government.

Part of the reason the judge doesn't trust the government has to do with what it did when the privacy commissioner first accused the Mounties of breaking the Access to Information Act. The Harper government responded by retroactively rewriting that law, granting amnesty to anyone involved in that particular document destruction. It then backdated those changes to 2011 to ensure they would apply to the Mounties in this case, and slipped the change through deep inside the 170-odd page budget bill.

Why was a change to the Access to Information Act buried in a budget bill? But that bit of fancy legislative footwork is nothing compared to what the government did. On learning the Mounties would face charges from the country's own privacy commissioner, it changed the law so that the data destruction couldn't be considered a crime. No charges, no trial, no evidence, no testimony. Nothing to see here.

The judge turned many heads when he drew a hyperbolic parallel. Would Nazis be absolved of war crimes if the laws governing them were changed after the crimes and backdated to 1940 before they happened? Martineau didn't do the cause any good by overreaching. But his central concern, one shared by the privacy commissioners and worried pundits even if not by the average Canadian, should not be overlooked.

If a majority government will justify potential wrongdoing by simply and arbitrarily changing the law after the bad deeds have been committed, what else might it do? Interesting election question.

Howard Elliott

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The Spectator’s View: When the courts don’t trust the government

OpinionJun 26, 2015Hamilton Spectator

Something quite remarkable happened at a court hearing in Montreal earlier this week. Federal Court Judge Luc Martineau ordered Public Safety Minister of Canada Steven Blaney and the RCMP to immediately turn over a hard drive containing a copy of all Quebec gun registry data.

He made that order even though the court had received "four separate undertakings" that the data in question would be preserved. The judge ordered the evidence turned over anyway, ostensibly because he didn't trust the federal government to keep its promise. He had good reason not to, but if you think about it, it's still a shocking thing for a judge to say. He didn't trust the government to abide by a legal decision.

This is just one step in a long legal wrangle between information privacy commissioner Suzanne Legault and the government. In the process of killing the long gun registry, the government wanted to destroy all records relating to it as quickly as possible. There was an appeal for information contained in those records. The RCMP was directed to and promised to keep the data safe pending the outcome of the appeal. Instead it destroyed the data. Claims have been made that it was acting at the behest of the government.

Part of the reason the judge doesn't trust the government has to do with what it did when the privacy commissioner first accused the Mounties of breaking the Access to Information Act. The Harper government responded by retroactively rewriting that law, granting amnesty to anyone involved in that particular document destruction. It then backdated those changes to 2011 to ensure they would apply to the Mounties in this case, and slipped the change through deep inside the 170-odd page budget bill.

Why was a change to the Access to Information Act buried in a budget bill? But that bit of fancy legislative footwork is nothing compared to what the government did. On learning the Mounties would face charges from the country's own privacy commissioner, it changed the law so that the data destruction couldn't be considered a crime. No charges, no trial, no evidence, no testimony. Nothing to see here.

The judge turned many heads when he drew a hyperbolic parallel. Would Nazis be absolved of war crimes if the laws governing them were changed after the crimes and backdated to 1940 before they happened? Martineau didn't do the cause any good by overreaching. But his central concern, one shared by the privacy commissioners and worried pundits even if not by the average Canadian, should not be overlooked.

If a majority government will justify potential wrongdoing by simply and arbitrarily changing the law after the bad deeds have been committed, what else might it do? Interesting election question.